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Kerala Lines is a new entrant (not really) in the field. Travel Centre - a fairly old Thrissur based agent - operates Kerala Lines. They've been operating weekend specials from Bangalore to Kerala since quite some time. They were handling the services of Shama Transport from Kerala earlier, then moved over to operating some other operators. A couple of months back, they started operating two new Volvo Multi-Axle buses to Pathanamthitta. The white beauties kept attracting quite often, but since I've not been traveling often these days, the opportunity to try them kept eluding me. Meanwhile, the service gained popularity and started getting really great reviews. My chance to try the service came in the form of my Niece's birthday celebrations at my home town. Not wasting any time, I got a seat blocked from the Travel center office in Bangalore. So it was Kerala Lines for my next Thrissur-Bangalore journey.

December 10, 2013:
After the celebrations at home, and a visit to our…

Sometime during Dussehra, Karnataka SRTC came up with a new Airavat service to Thrissur via Mysore. This bus curiously starts from Mysore Road Satellite Terminal at a very awkward 3pm, reaching Thrissur at an even awkward 1AM. The timing is no different in the opposite stretch. This service made me quite curious. The website did not give any clue about the route it takes beyond Mysore. But the running timings somewhat gave me a clue that this could be via Gudalur-Nilambur. Some days after the bus got running, I got information that the service is operated by Mysore depot! Now that was something quite interesting. I thought I must try this service once. But I travel very rarely these days, and I did not see an opportunity in the near future to try the service as well. Sometime later, I so turned out that my Niece's first birthday is to be celebrated at our hometown - and that was on a working day. This was the chance - sure!

I was thinking of going home after a very very long time. The dates I was planning was still a month away - without another thought, I went ahead and checked on the Karnataka SRTC website. The Thrissur-Bangalore B9R was almost sold out already, while the Ernakulam-Bangalore Merc Tri-axle had a lot of seats - I decided to book on this one, and selected a seat around the middle of the bus. Days went past. As the traveling day came closer, I was unsure if I'd be able to travel. It so turned out that the weekend would be working, and I'd have to take a leave to go home. I almost dropped the plan to go home, but did not cancel the ticket. Finally, on Friday afternoon, I decided to head home (read here).

September 22, 2013:
I got the first message about my bus at around 6pm. The message mentioned my bus number to be "KA-01-F-9275" from "Bangalore Depot-2". That was the beginning - Karnataka SRTC kept sending me the same message time and again - I got the message…

It was a calm Friday morning. I was still unsure if I should go home that evening. I had a return ticket for Sunday, but hadn't booked any for going home. I was still confused after I got off the phone talking to mom. I reached office in the morning as usual, and was busy with some work until noon. My afternoon, I had made up my mind to go home that evening. Now, I had to be kidding to decide to go home on a Friday. I logged on to RedBus, and was shocked to see that all the operators had tickets - that too at normal rates! I quickly narrowed down to three options - S.Kallada (my all-time favorite), Shama and RKG. Kallada was ruled out this time - for reasons that I still don't know. I called up my friend to get tickets for RKG - he couldn't attend the calls. A split second decision, and I logged on to the Shama website, and booked a seat for their 10pm Ernakulam bus.

I took a print out of the ticket after reaching home. Like everytime, I was late…